Let me begin by making the following statement, so there can be no confusion:

I like Mark Sweeney. The few occasions that I’ve met him, he was personable and pleasant. He seems to be a really nice guy to everyone he meets, no matter what.

Now, having gotten that out of the way, Fox Sports San Diego needs to stop putting Sweeney in the play-by-play booth. Like, immediately and forever.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Sweeney does a halfway decent job as a studio analyst. He should keep doing that.

However, when he shows up for those three innings during home games as the third wheel in the booth between Don Orsillo and Mark Grant, the life gets sucked right out of the broadcast. Whenever he’s in the broadcast booth, I find myself tuning out of the action of the game and doing other things while the TV stays on as background noise. When he subs for Mud on occasion, I find myself wishing that there wasn’t a delay between the radio and TV feeds.

Now that Dick Enberg and his Dickisms have retired from everyday play-by-play life, Sweeney has taken up the mantle of driving some Friars’ fans to drink.

You may have noticed that Padres and Pints now has it’s own section located on the right (A big thank you to Melvin for setting that up for us!).

There’s a reason for this, as we currently have quite a few things in the works. Now that all of the past videos have been completed and posted, we are ready to book more new guests. And, as a matter of fact, we have indeed done just that….twice in the next two weeks.

To hold you over for the time being and to hopefully lighten the mood in Padre-land, we decided to cut a quick promo. Because “Hey! It’s baseball!”

Ever since the dawn of RJ’s Fro (2010) I have been doing a list of “Drinking Game Rules”. Every year though they sit in my un-published posts folder, rotting away in blogging purgatory never to be seen by any of you fine readers out there. Last year I even got so far as to actually film the rules at Randy Jones All-American Sports Grill for a Padres and Pints segment but it was a bumbling mess (thanks Ghost), so it quickly hit the cutting room floor. This year that all changes though. Here is your PUBLISHED list! (a good 2+ months into the season)

A couple ground rules first. Drinking games are supposed to be fun. I don’t want to create something that just soothe’s the pain. You won’t see any completely negative rules, like “every time a Padres starter gives up a home run”. There are some rules that have two outcomes (one positive, one negative) but I try to make it fun still. So if something bad happens you are still enjoying yourself. Watching your favorite baseball team is supposed to be fun, right? So here’s a novel idea, you should have fun with this. But please drink responsibly, we don’t want to see any of you Padres fans on the latest episode of Cops. Also if you are under 21 substitute your favorite non-alcoholic beverage of choice.